


Perpetual Motion

by TheSkyLarkin



Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [11]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dismemberment, Dissociation, Eldritch Beings Do Not Respect the Rules of Grammar and Punctuation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Whump, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major Character Injury, Mentioned Eli Vance, Psychological Torture, References to Groundhog Day - All Media Types, Swearing, Time Loop, Torture, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:36:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkyLarkin/pseuds/TheSkyLarkin
Summary: (HL1/Black Mesa remake to HL2) In which the G-Man is needlessly cruel on purpose, and Gordon’s sudden inability to speak is the least of his problems. Or, “New Game Plus” AU if you prefer.Challenge: Whumptober 2020 (Chapters 1-2)Prompts: No. 24 - “You’re Not Making Any Sense” “Forced Mutism”See the chapter summaries for the individual list of prompts filled per chapter.See the end notes for each chapter for comprehensive warnings/tags.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun & Gordon Freeman, The G-Man & Gordon Freeman
Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946617
Comments: 16
Kudos: 49
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. Acceleration

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been using the Black Mesa Remake version as a reference as I write this, but this fic should still be mostly canon compliant with the original game.
> 
> Thank you to cherryslibrary ([Tumblr](https://cherryslibrary.tumblr.com/)/[Ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryslibrary/pseuds/cherryslibrary)) for beta reading!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompts: No. 22 - “Drugged”

Gordon Freeman wakes up speechless. But more importantly, Gordon Freeman wakes up _late to work_.

In his rush to get dressed and get to the test lab, he doesn’t even notice his sudden muteness until he’s just barely made it onto the last tram headed towards Sector C for the hour. (It’s empty, thank god. He’s sure to get enough flack when he actually gets to where he needed to be over an hour ago.) He spots Barney Calhoun having trouble with that security keypad _again_ (this has to be the third month in a row that the security guard has managed to lock himself out of that exact same door in the maintenance passage), and can’t help but laugh out loud… but no sound comes out of his mouth.

Even then, Gordon is way too preoccupied with worrying about the upcoming experiment and his part in it to pay his sudden loss of voice any mind. Of all the days to be late, of course it has to be the one day he’d drawn the short straw and was scheduled to be the person tasked with _being there in the test chamber_ to place the sample in the anti-mass spectrometer—a menial task, but someone human has to do it since the specimen is far too delicate to use an automated rover. The massive, bulky machine is so sensitive that he’s been forbidden to drink any caffeine before the test today—it’s probably a blessing in disguise that he’s skipped breakfast.

His lack of voice is probably the result of a sore throat (although there’s none of the pain he’s come to associate with a sore throat, nor any other signs of illness either). It’s no big deal, Gordon can take some cold medicine and try to sleep it off after the test has concluded. Even with the considerable amount of power that Black Mesa generates internally, it still costs the facility a six-figure sum _per minute_ that the anti-mass spectrometer is powered up, and he would very much like to keep his job.

The tram ride to Sector C seems to take an eternity, but once Gordon gets waved through security (with a needless jab over his lack of a ponytail—what was he supposed to do, ignore a direct order from the administrator and get fired over a haircut?) he rushes through to the test labs with only the briefest acknowledgment towards his coworkers. No one remarks on his current silence, mostly because they’re too preoccupied with mentioning how late he is. Nevertheless, he gets his HEV suit on in record time and makes it down to Test Lab C/33-a before the sample that they're testing today can beat him there.

Okay, so he had a rough start. But that doesn’t mean that Gordon can’t turn the rest of the day around starting right now. He’s here, he’s doing his job, and everything is going to be _just fine_.

Moments later, a Resonance Cascade—an impossible, improbable event never before witnessed by human eyes—occurs and everything quickly goes to shit from there.

* * *

Several days and a trip to an alien dimension later, Gordon hurls one last grenade towards a dying alien god as the room crumbles to pieces around him until he’s swept off his feet and sucked into a vortex of green and orange light. He would scream in his final moments, but his voice still hasn’t returned to him even after everything that’s happened. And then, time… stops.

In the blink of an eye, Gordon is suddenly transported to another part of Xen, miles away from the tower he’s spent the last several hours ascending. He spots it off in the distance as the manta ray-like aliens scatter away from the pulsing red portal at the top, which explodes with the force of a supernova seconds later, taking the entire planetoid it sits upon with it as well. Before the blast can reach him, the world around him seems to freeze completely again. But this time, he is not alone.

“Gordon Freeman, in the fleshhhh. Or, rather, in the hazard... suit.”

A man in a blue business suit walks up to Gordon, ignoring all laws of physics as he traverses the liminal space. Although, in his case, “man” is a very loose term. There’s something odd about him at first glance, and he only appears stranger and stranger at subsequent glances.

His head is too angular, his (teal— no, pale blue— or maybe silver?) eyes are bright to the point of luminescence, and the inhumanly pale skin around his nose and cheekbones is stretched too tight, like a lycra mask over a skeleton. The cadence of his voice as he explains that Gordon’s weapons have been requisitioned on account of being government property is stiff and halted, as if he learned English—or perhaps the concept of speech at all—from a corrupted audiobook on a broken cassette tape. He gives the impression of someone—or rather, _something_ —trying to act human without any frame for reference to what humanity actually entails.

In another blink of an eye, an image of the carnage Gordon has left in his wake in his mad scramble through Black Mesa to get to the Lambda complex flashes before his eyes as the strange entity praises his “work” on the border world (which—like the rest of the last seventy-two hours or so—Gordon would just like to pretend never happened for the rest of his life, thanks) before announcing that his “employers” (how is he making such a mundane word sound so _sinister_?) have offered Gordon a job. The entity in the blue suit continues speaking about Gordon’s “limitlessssss… potential” as a whirlwind of metal and glass transforms into the interior of one of the Black Mesa trams around them, with sparks of lights flying past the windows like shooting stars in an inky black void outside of the vehicle.

“You’ve… proven yourself a decisive man. So I don’t, expect you’ll have any trouble, deciding what to do… if you’re interested. Just step into the portal and, I will take that as a yessss…” There’s something almost predatory about the attempt he makes at a smile. “Otherwise, well—” The guttural sound he makes scrapes at the inside of Gordon’s _brain_ , like nails on a chalkboard at a psychic level. “—I can offer you a battle, you have no chance at winninnnngggg… Rather an anticlimax after what you’ve just ssssurvived.”

A portal appears at the doorway of the tram car, and for Gordon, the choice is clear: he might not like the idea of working for this “man”, but he’s had enough “battles” for one lifetime. “Wisely done! Mr. Freeman,” The entity in the blue suit says as he crosses the threshold. “I will see you up ahead.”

“But for you… my absence, may, not feel sssssso long…”

Hold on, what does that mean? There’s a bright flash of light…

* * *

“Good morning, and welcome to the Black Mesa transit system,” the automated voice announces over the tram intercom—as it has done every day since he started working here—once the blinding light recedes from Gordon’s vision. “This automated train is provided for the security and convenience of the Black Mesa research facility personnel.”

He’s... back? How the hell is he _back_? Looking back at the platform the tram has just departed from, Gordon can see various scientists and security personnel drinking their coffee and milling about, with not a corpse or alien to be found.

“The time is… 8:47 am.”

8:47 am? That was the time he got on the tram before… Gordon looks down—he’s still in his lab coat and regular work clothes, no blood-splattered HEV suit in sight. Aside from some mild hunger pangs, he doesn’t feel like he’s just gone about three days with no food and minimal sleep while being shot at, bit, sprayed with acid, stabbed by giant alien tentacles with sharp claws, injected with enough morphine that he ought to be very concerned for his heart, burned, blasted by various types of energy weapons…

Has it all been some horrifically vivid split-second stress nightmare brought on by anxiety about today’s experiment and a lack of sleep? Although he probably should have gotten a full night’s rest, Gordon was up late last night doing— wait, what was he doing up so late? He can’t seem to recall now, even though it happened just yesterday...

 _’It’s 4239!’_ he tries to shout as he passes by Barney struggling with that keypad again, but his voice is (still?) gone. Gordon fishes through his pockets but his phone is missing, just as it was in the “dream” too. (It wouldn’t have been very useful during the crisis anyway—it would just have probably given the military one more device to track him down with if he hadn’t left it in his room.) Perhaps the Resonance Cascade has caused some kind of temporal recursion. Was that even physically possible? He can’t recall off the top of his head; he’ll have to check when he gets to Sector C and finds a free computer terminal.

The possibility of (dare he say— er, think it) time travel sounds like something out of a science fiction story, but then again so does the thought of creatures from other dimensions invading his workplace. The entire scenario seems so fantastic and unbelievable—even more so as he takes a seat, takes a few deep breaths, and watches the familiar scenery of his “daily commute” fly by outside. The tram car races past the canyon walls outside layered in various shades of rust and then through the abandoned mining tunnels appropriated by the designers of the tram system. The sheer mundanity of this familiar journey makes his "memories" seem like a passing daydream once he's had a chance to process them.

The notion of him surviving a serious laboratory disaster, a military invasion (in which the entire HECU Marine force is gunning for _him_ , a theoretical physicist and a civilian with no combat or criminal record, specifically), _and_ a hostile alien world only to have some kind of final showdown with a massive version of those “aliens” that were sold in tacky New Mexico tourist traps seems more and more ridiculous by the minute. He’s a scientist, not some action movie hero! Sure, Black Mesa is researching some very cutting edge topics (at least it seems as if that’s the case in most of the other departments to Gordon—it’s been six months now and his retinal scans and application for a higher security clearance level _still_ haven’t been processed for some reason…) but this is some late-night sci-fi B movie nonsense! This has to be some kind of stress-induced hallucination, it has to! It’s the only logical, plausible explanation.

Perhaps he should swing by the infirmary after the test has concluded. That’s it; Gordon just has to make it through the experiment, and then he’ll go get his head sorted out. It’s going to be fine, everything is going to be just fi— wait, is that a massive radiation leak just outside of Sector C right below the tram tracks that he’s passing by!?

* * *

The further and further he gets into Sector C and the closer he gets to the test chamber, the more certain Gordon is that if (and that’s still a strong “if”—he’s not yet prepared to accept the presence of a temporal recursion as his primary hypothesis for his incredibly strong sense of deja vu) a Resonance Cascade event did occur “before” during the test, it did so due to _literally everything_ in the entire sector being broken or faulty in some manner. It seems that the radiation leak he witnessed was just an omen of things to come.

As he enters the lobby, Gordon overhears something from the front desk about a massive system crash that just occurred. Instead of ignoring it and rushing off, this time he sticks around long enough to learn that the test chamber control room has also been affected by whatever issue they’ve been having up here. That does not bode well for the success of their experiment, and it is followed by more concerning sights as Gordon takes his time getting to the test chamber and pays more attention to his surroundings. On his way, he observes multiple instances of malfunctioning equipment and overhears snippets of conversations between his coworkers about an earlier coolant leak, irregular fluctuations, and instruments malfunctioning, to name a few.

Alright, his temporal recursion theory is officially off the table now—there’s _no way_ Gordon would have missed all of these obvious warning signs if this had really happened to him already...

By the time he gets suited up and makes his way to the control room, Gordon is certain that the experiment will be called off. How can they possibly hope to get accurate readings when it seems like every piece of equipment in the lab is on the verge of malfunctioning? To his astonishment, not only do Dr. Kleiner and the other scientists announce that the experiment will still proceed, but they will also be boosting the anti-mass spectrometer to one hundred and five percent. (Why do the settings even go up that high?) Every system in the sector seems to be falling apart, and yet they _still_ mean to go through with the test involving one of the most expensive pieces of equipment that they have!?

Alright, he might expect this sort of thing from _Kleiner_ because that’s the kind of reckless scientist he’s always been ever since he was Gordon’s mentor back at MIT. But the rest of them? What does it matter how much effort it took the administrator to get the sample they’re about to test? When— er, if something were to happen, would the administration accept “we needed the extra resolution” as a valid excuse for damaging a billion-dollar piece of equipment? (Or worse?)

 _‘You can’t be serious!’_ Gordon tries to exclaim, only to remember that he’s lost his voice as the rest of the room turns back to the control panel while Kleiner opens the door for him. (This sudden muteness is really starting to get on his nerves…) Kleiner himself seems strangely oblivious to Gordon’s current distress as he remarks that Dr. Vance has been busy making last-minute preparations for the new experiment. Though Gordon doesn’t know him as well as Kleiner yet, Dr. Eli Vance has always seemed like a much more level-headed individual. Perhaps he can make Kleiner see sense…

To Gordon’s relief, Dr. Vance seems just as apprehensive of the experiment as he feels. “These last-minute changes… they’re a bit strange and just—” A panel in the fusebox behind him explodes in a shower of sparks and broken glass, and Gordon gestures wildly towards it for Kleiner’s benefit as Dr. Vance rushes over to stop the machine from going critical. How is he witnessing all of this malfunctioning technology and somehow not having second thoughts about the experiment continuing regardless?

“What in the blazes is going on with our equipment?” Kleiner wonders out loud.

_‘I don’t know, but we should probably postpone the test until we can figure it out.’_

“It was…” Dr. Vance heaves a frustrated sigh. “...never meant to do this in the first place!”

 _’Yes! Thank you, Dr. Vance! Now for the safety of everyone—but mostly for the person who is scheduled to be in the test chamber—we should call off the experiment until we can run it without compromising the integrity of the test results and the lives of everyone in this facility...’_ Gordon looks over expectantly at Dr. Kleiner.

“It’s... nothing we can’t handle ourselves, Eli.”

What. Seriously, what?

“Run along, Gordon. We’ll be but a moment.”

Is he serious? Gordon can only stare at him in sheer exasperation, to the point that Kleiner finally has to all but shove him over to the elevator, despite his silent (but animated) protests.

“Gordon, you’re not making any sense. Just… tell me after the test, alright?” Kleiner pats him awkwardly on the arm before hitting the button on the elevator, and Gordon wants to scream.

Unbelievable. Kleiner and everyone else in the control room have to be purposefully ignoring all of these blatant warning signs. Someone’s job must be on the line—or possibly it’s the funding for the entire Anomalous Materials department that is at risk—if they don’t ignore all the malfunctions and run this experiment now as the administration dictates. At least that’s the only solid line of reasoning that Gordon can come up with for their behavior as he steps into the test chamber. It tracks with what his two colleagues at the door have just said to him: despite the sample being tested today being “potentially the most unstable” sample they’ve gotten their hands on, someone had specifically assured the administrator that nothing could go wrong...

They were just asking for some catastrophe to happen at this point, weren’t they? And if it did, who was most likely to shoulder the blame for it?

As the phase two emitters fire up and the entire room shakes, Gordon decides that if the worst happens, he’s going to make sure that everyone in the whole department knows that he tried to stop them... but bureaucracy and kowtowing to the management got in the way. 

Despite following standard insertion procedures to the letter as instructed and despite being as careful as he possibly can with the unstable sample, the “extremely unlikely” Resonance Cascade scenario occurs regardless. _‘I tried to warn them, I really did…’_ is Gordon’s last thought before the green light fills his vision and he's briefly swept away to parts unknown (and yet that feel strangely familiar…) before he passes out.

* * *

“Listen… I tried to warn them,” Dr. Vance plaintively proclaims to a subdued Kleiner over the ringing of the fire alarms and the sounds of explosions rising up from the lower level.

Gordon can only nod along silently as he approaches them, having just made his way out of the ruins of the test lab and the carnage left in the wake of the experiment gone horrifically wrong. _'Thank you, Dr. Vance.'_ At least someone else here understands.

* * *

Over the course of the next two days, the constant feeling of deja vu everywhere he goes and with every situation he finds himself in causes Gordon to finally accept that yes, he has in fact been here and done this before. At least he does better this time around: even with only the vaguest memories of where most of the traps set by the HECU have been placed, he is able to avoid most of them. (With one major exception; he’s kicking himself internally as he claws his way back to consciousness in the trash compactor again —how did he forget _that_ one?)

Gordon even manages to save a few of his coworkers from ambushes by aliens and marines where he wasn’t able to react fast enough the first time. (That, or he had tried to yell at them that there was something about to attack from behind… forgetting that he’d lost his voice at the worst possible moment and thus having to watch them be torn to shreds by gunfire or eaten by one of those barnacle-like aliens that had attached themselves to the ceilings before he could intervene.) Pity that despite his best efforts, most of them still ended up meeting a horrible fate in some other fashion shortly afterward...

And then somewhere on the way to the Lambda Complex, he fails to duck behind cover fast enough and takes a tank round right to the chest for his troubles. Though perilously low on battery, the HEV suit still absorbs most of the damage, of course—otherwise he wouldn’t be alive to feel the impact bruise or break (hopefully just bruise) several ribs and possibly some internal organs. Gordon manages to push the pain aside long enough to roll out of the way of a sudden hail of gunfire aimed at him, coughing up a mouthful of blood as he does so. That’s never a good sign.

But worst of all, the AI core of the suit itself seems to have been broken in some way. “Maj— —acture Det—,” the voice of the AI falters, “Automat— —gage— Morphi— Admin— Admin— Admin— Ad—stered.”

Gordon can hear four distinct hisses of decompressed air as the suit injects the drug directly into his veins at four times the recommended dose. This is bad. This is very bad... At least until the euphoria hits and suddenly every ounce of pain melts away along with all of his concerns regarding the current situation, and then it’s _great_.

The automated voice of the HEV suit’s AI stutters to life once more in an attempt to warn Gordon that his vital signs are dropping at an alarming rate as he breaks cover, guns blazing. But the notification sounds like it’s coming from another universe over and Gordon just cannot bring himself to care right now. After two days of absolute hell, he feels like a million bucks. Aside from a little shortness of breath, he feels like he could take on every army in the world— no, the multiverse!

Gordon doesn’t remember the rest of the encounter, but suddenly everyone in the courtyard is dead and the offending tank is on fire. Good, that’s exactly what it deserves. He’s breathing like he’s just run five marathons back to back, but he doesn’t feel like he’s moved at all… He needs to keep moving, he’s got somewhere to be. Where exactly that is, he doesn’t quite remember off the top of his head, but it was somewhere _really important_ —

Unfortunately, Gordon is focusing so hard on trying to remember what the goal he’s attempting to accomplish is that he forgets about the active minefield in the complex at the other end of the access tunnel. He only remembers why the sandpits by the downed powerline were such a dangerous location when his foot has already triggered one of the landmines.

_‘Oh, sh—!’_

It turns out that even with an HEV suit and on a quadruple dose of morphine, stepping on a landmine hurts like all hell. But even with all of the landmines in the immediate area detonating in a devastating chain reaction with him caught in the middle, the resulting blast still isn’t powerful enough to kill him instantly. It’s not without massive damage however—through the overwhelming waves of pain and his suddenly hazy vision, Gordon thinks he sees one of his mangled legs a few feet away. (He doesn’t even want to try and find where the other one has landed...)

Gordon doesn’t know what kills him in the end—it could have been either the blood loss or the sniper on the roof of a nearby building taking pity on him, it was much too close to call. All he remembers is the soft whoosh of a silenced bullet as the world around him turned foggier and his vision went black. When the world comes back into focus, he finds himself on the tram headed to Sector C once again, still in possession of all his limbs thankfully. At least his injuries don’t seem to carry over when time resets...

* * *

At the start of this next “loop”, Gordon has to face facts and admit that this isn’t some awful stress-induced nightmare—he’s definitely caught in some kind of temporal recursion, kind of like in that one movie with Bill Murray. But instead of a quirky town, he’s trapped in an apocalypse scenario...

He makes an effort to get the attention of the people on the platform as the tram pulls away, but they are utterly oblivious to the scientist banging on the windows with his fists hard enough to shake the entire tram car. (Yet despite the force applied, nothing moves.) None of the security guards Gordon passes on the ride over to the test labs seem to notice him waving frantically through the tram windows either, even the ones who are actively letting him through the security checkpoints! What the hell are these guys being paid to do exactly?

When his first plan fails utterly, Gordon tries everything he possibly can to break himself out of the tram car. However, the emergency stop switch has been disabled. Neither of the doors will budge and none of the glass panes so much as shake no matter how hard he kicks. The fire hammer, specifically for breaking glass in the event of an emergency according to the sign, has been fused into the frame of the tram car and nothing in Gordon’s current possession is capable of wrenching it free. It’s as if whatever malevolent force that’s keeping him here has already anticipated his reaction and planned accordingly...

In his frantic attempt to escape, Gordon happens to look out the window as the tram approaches the entrance to Sector C just in time to see another tram car passing by… carrying the entity in the blue suit who looks right at him with his piercing vaguely-colored eyes. Gordon keeps his own gaze fixed on the entity until his tram turns a corner; how long has it been watching him? Has it been in that spot from the beginning, and Gordon has only noticed because he just happened to look up at the right time by pure coincidence? Or did the entity only appear in that space after Gordon took the “job offer” and the temporal recursions began?

This train of thought carries him all the way through to the first security checkpoint in Sector C, where the guard on duty makes a comment about his recent haircut once again. Even though it’s a relatively meaningless jab, Gordon can’t help but think—the issue of lab safety aside, it was pretty strange that the administrator _himself_ had contracted him about getting rid of his ponytail. Just who the hell in his department had complained to the highest authority in Black Mesa (who surely had more important things to worry about) about his haircut of all things?

As soon as he makes it past security, Gordon makes a beeline for the nearest office for a clipboard, a pen, and some paper. He figures that it’ll be easier than trying to find a working tablet that no one would object to him bringing to the test labs, or hauling around a whiteboard. He’s got a plan this time around, but it’ll require getting his colleagues to actually listen— er, “listen” to him this time. (For a moment, he wishes he’d learned ASL in high school rather than German, even if it had been useful to him in Innsbruck. But then he has to wonder how many of his colleagues, if any, are even remotely fluent in ASL anyway.)

If the entity in the blue suit has a hand in manipulating the day’s events, it wouldn’t be surprising to Gordon that it could also be responsible for the system crash that occurred before he arrived. Taking away Internet access for the entire sector meant that there was no way for him to contact anyone else outside of Black Mesa about these recursions or attempt to change events outside of the facility. As much as Gordon would have liked to look up some of the more obtuse equations for calculating the probability of a Resonance Cascade scenario, that information was beyond his grasp at the moment. But that doesn’t matter, as long as he can prove the existence of these temporal recursions through logic and mathematics—and that he isn’t going crazy—he might be able to finally get the experiment called off…

...or at least prevent more needless death in the aftermath of the Resonance Cascade. But writing up a suitably short but well-reasoned argument concerning the minuscule probability of a Resonance Cascade scenario—and how him being able to predict it will occur with absolute certainty in vivid detail proves that he has experienced this chain of events before—proves a lot harder to accomplish when it seems like every scientist in Sector C seems to be pushing Gordon towards the Test Labs while badgering about him being late to the experiment—even when they’re not even involved with today’s test in any capacity! (What is constantly mentioning how late he is to him supposed to accomplish exactly? It’s not going to make him any less late.)

In between the office and the control room, Gordon tries to flag down anyone who has a higher security clearance than him in the department (which to be fair is most of his coworkers) and get them to hear him out about the temporal recursion. But he is either ignored or dismissed entirely, without so much as a glance at his writing—which Gordon finds incredibly rude, he’s always tried to at the very least half-heartedly look over at whatever his colleagues show him when they’re gushing about their latest breakthrough. So he heads towards the one person in his department most likely to at least “hear” him out.

(“If another instrument malfunctions today, I’m going to explode!” One of his colleagues exclaims as he passes by, and Gordon wonders why _this_ man couldn’t have been the one to determine if the experiment goes forward rather than the glory hounds in the control room, who are evidently more concerned about appeasing the administrator than the validity of the test results, if not the safety of everyone in this facility. Too bad he seems to be utterly ignoring him, just like everyone else...)

“Ah, Gordon, there you—” is all that Gordon allows Kleiner to say before he attempts to drag him out of the control room and shove his hastily written explanation into his hands. _‘Please, you’ve got to believe me this time! People are going to die if we go through with this test, but we can—’_

“Oh for goodness sake, stop stalling and get to the test chamber already!” Kleiner finally snaps at him, without even so much a glance at the paper. “Whatever it is can wait until later; we should have commenced the experiment nearly an hour ago! Honestly, Gordon, you’re not making any sense right now.”

At this point after his abrupt dismissal—compounded with those of everyone else he’s tried to convince—Gordon simply gives up and lets himself be herded along to his destination without a fight. As the door to the test chamber closes behind him, he’s still seething silently in irritation at the lack of anyone even remotely trying to understand his attempts at communication. Has no one at all noticed his sudden muteness, or wondered about his unexplained lack of speech? Sure, Gordon’s not the most talkative person in the world, but someone should’ve asked him why he was being so silent by now…

Does everyone here truly think so little of him that they simply don’t care? Is this all they think he’s good for: a glorified gopher?

“Now, if you would be so good as to climb up and start the rotors...” His colleague up in the control room says over the intercom, in what sounds like the most condescending tone possible, derailing Gordon’s train of thought. Alright, time for his backup plan. Gordon climbs up to the platform above and walks over to the rotor controls… before passing right by them to lean against the wall, where he has a great view of the entire test chamber and the narrow blast window into the control room.

Plan B is for him to do _absolutely nothing_ while in the test chamber for the duration of the experiment. If the anti-mass spectrometer never starts, the test cannot commence and the Resonance Cascade does not occur. Even if it does occur after security escorts him out and they find someone else to deliver the sample, this would still alter a major event within the timeline…

Call it an experiment in causality.

“Er, Gordon? The rotors?” Gordon has picked this spot in particular in order to observe his colleagues; he’s no psychologist, but he’s darky interested to see how they will react to his sudden non-compliance. How long will they hold out until—

The intercom crackles to life again. “Ah, of course, engineering must not have had time to repair that control panel.” Wait, what? “I’ll have to send them a strongly worded email… no worries, the auxiliary controls should still work, I’m sure.” The rotors begin humming as Gordon wonders what the point of having him come up here just to push a button was when his colleagues could have done so all along this entire time…

However, the real test of how malleable events are within the recursion does not occur until the unstable sample is brought up via cart. Even as his coworkers are yelling at him to insert the sample already before the machine goes critical, Gordon ignores them as he continues to watch the unfolding scene from the top of the platform.

If he doesn’t move from his perch, the anti-mass spectrometer will eventually overload due to the immense amount of power it is draining just to have it run (and probably explode for good measure because that’s the kind of luck he’s been having). Or his colleagues in the control room will shut it down before it gets a chance to do so, then bitch him out for not following through on his role in the experiment. Either way, without his active participation the Resonance Cascade cannot occur—

—until the cart containing the sample starts to move on its own. (But how? That model doesn’t have a motor of any sort, the wheels should be locked in place, and the floor is at a slight decline in the other direction…) Somehow, it slowly rolls towards the anti-mass spectrometer until the sample makes contact with the beam. The only thing that ends up actually changing for Gordon as the Resonance Cascade begins is now he has a perfect view to watch helplessly as his unfortunate coworkers in the control room are disintegrated into ash as a beam of green light erupts from the unstable machine.

‘ _Well,_ scheiße _,_ ’ is Gordon’s last thought as his vision goes green yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information on morphine overdoses comes from the [Mayo Clinic](https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/morphine-injection-route/side-effects/drg-20074202) and the [American Addiction Centers websites](https://americanaddictioncenters.org/morphine-treatment/mental-and-physical-effects). "But there's no way that the symptoms of a morphine overdose would kick in that quickly!" you might say. It's Black Mesa Experimental Super Morphine(tm), shh...
> 
> Triggers/Warnings: Major Injuries, Major Character Death(s), Accidental Morphine Overdose, (Implied) Psychological Torture, PTSD, Emotional/Psychological Whump, Swearing, Dismemberment


	2. Terminal Velocity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompts: No. 31 - “Today’s Special: Torture” “Experiment” “Left For Dead”

After a few more temporal— you know what, fuck it.

After a few more time loops, Gordon tries something new. As per usual, the tram reaches the Sector C platform and Ryan the security guard walks over to let him out. But rather than standing impatiently by the door, Gordon is sitting at the far end of the tram, sprawled out lazily in his seat—as if he isn’t late to a very important (and very expensive) experiment.

“Morning, Mr. Freeman! Looks like you’re running late.” Oh, is he? Gordon _never_ would have noticed.

A few keystrokes later, Ryan gets the door open and steps back to let him through. However, Gordon does not move from his seat. “Mr. Freeman?” Ryan says a little louder as he peeks his head in, as if perhaps Gordon didn’t hear him or has fallen asleep. With his eyes wide open. Staring directly back at the security guard with a stony expression.

“You…know you’re running late, right?” Ryan asks, bewildered by Gordon’s complete nonchalance. Gordon shakes his head in response. _‘This isn’t my stop,’_ he tries to convey through mouthing the words and body language, motioning ahead even though he knows the only thing in that direction is a tram service station that he definitely doesn't have the clearance level for. Ryan tries to stammer out an answer, completely at a loss of words as to how to respond to this.

Gordon just stares back at him resolutely, not moving a muscle. He knows he’s acting like a petulant child right now, but at this point? He doesn’t care. Let’s see how the time loop responds to him refusing to get anywhere near the test chamber today…

After what amounts to a five-minute staring contest, Ryan finally throws his hands up in the air in defeat. “Alright, sir. It’s your funeral then…” he mutters as the tram door slides shut. The tram car starts moving forward, with everything still seeming normal despite his success in breaking what has so far been an unbreakable sequence of events. But Gordon is going to keep holding his breath until the tram makes it to the end of the line and he sees actual evidence of something in this loop finally changing.

The tram rounds a corner towards the maintenance station, and everything suddenly goes black…

* * *

“Good morning, and welcome to the Black Mesa transit system.”

‘ _Fuck!_ ’

* * *

“Hmph, how childish.” Dr. Tripolt grumbles as the automatic door closes behind Dr. Freeman.

“Disgraceful,” Dr. Yang agrees with her. “I’m not enthusiastic about my part in today’s experiment, but you’re not going to see _me_ hopping up on desks like a monkey on bath salts! Perhaps we ought to have hired that Mossman woman instead…”

“Do you think he’s _still_ mad that admin made him cut off that ridiculous ponytail?” Dr. Jarreau wonders. “It was a serious potential lab safety hazard, and at least a decade out of style to boot!”

“Hmm, I don’t know; in all honesty, it did kind of suit him…”

“Well, that’s still no excuse—”

The physicist is interrupted by the door sliding open with a thunderous bang. “Which one of you assholes stole my casserole!?” Dr. Magnusson roars.

Further down the hallway in the locker room, Gordon chows down on his stolen breakfast. This has got to be one of the worst casseroles he’s ever eaten, but he’s not going hungry for one loop longer…

* * *

“Red team, status report!”

There’s a brief burst of static on the radio, followed by a burst of distant gunfire. “Freeman spotted heading down on the southwestern ridge, sir!” Sargent Markus reports over the noise. “Returning fir—holy shit, he has a rocket launcher! Get back—”

An explosion is heard, followed by more static. “Are we sure this guy is just a civilian, sir?” Lieutenant Gabriel asks incredulously. “He’s been mowing down our guys like the goddamn Terminator! He’s shrugged off multiple direct rounds from an armed helicopter like it was nothing!”

The general is about to rebuke him when the radio comes back to life. “This is Sargent Markus. Freeman is down, I repeat, Freeman is down!” He sounds euphoric to the point of deliriousness, as if he’s taken out an entire army rather than just one scientist.

“Fucking finally, Jesus Christ,” Lieutenant Gabriel mutters. The general makes a mental note to properly chew him out for his unprofessional behavior when this is all over. “Status report, Sargent,” he barks.

“Right, uh… the target was returning fire and climbing down the maintenance pipeline when he, er, lost his footing and plummeted into the canyon below.” Sargent Markus sounds appropriately sheepish and the general hopes that his disappointed sigh is not audible over the radio.

Lieutenant Gabriel sputters incoherently for a moment, before grabbing the radio to reply. “Well, get your men down there and _make sure_ he’s actually dead! Right now!”

“But, sir, that’s got to be at least a hundred-foot drop! No one could have—”

“That’s an order, Sargent!”

* * *

It takes him a couple more loops, but Gordon defeats the alien god on Xen again and finally returns to the tram car at the end of the universe.

The journey has become easier and easier with each loop now that he knows the exact locations of all of the ambushes set up by the aliens or the HECU marines, and can plan accordingly. (Except that damn ambush in the hallway by the freight shipping docks; somehow he _always_ forgets about that one until it’s too late.) He’s now spotted the entity in the blue suit at various locations within Black Mesa—always watching Gordon from a distance and always disappearing too quickly for him to follow. The knowledge that he’s being watched wherever he goes (and possibly has been from the start) makes his skin crawl but until he can break free from the temporal recursions, there’s nothing he can do about it.

Gordon can’t shake the feeling of being on edge as the tram car materializes out of the starry void around him and the blue-suited entity as he’s in the middle of offering Gordon “a job” once again—of anticipating that the metal construct around him will suddenly break into a million pieces and fling him into the nothingness outside. Perhaps the entity in front of him is aware of his plans for the end of this loop? But Gordon doesn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out. This time around, he takes a seat as the entity in the blue suit is still in the middle of its sales pitch, fighting the overwhelming feelings of restlessness to do so despite his aching muscles from the fight he’s just won.

“It’s time to choose.” The entity repeats. Gordon crosses his arms and scowls at him in response. This _is_ his choice. Gordon has already been trapped in a battle he has no chance at winning this entire time—nothing he has done thus far has managed to free him from this time loop. Perhaps choosing the portal and “employment” the first time around was a trick; maybe he had failed in the eyes of this entity by too easily accepting the offer presented to him when he was supposed to be defiant and try to negotiate for a better deal. (Despite not having a voice to do so with…) The only thing he could think to try after all of his many attempts to break the loop was to go back (or is "forward" the more appropriate word?) to this moment and pick the other option.

“Well it looks like, we, won’t be working together…” The entity intones with no change in voice or expression, merely acknowledging that it recognizes the rejection in a purely objective manner. “No regggrettsss, Misssster Freeman…” Without another word, the entity turns and crosses the threshold into the portal in a burst of familiar green light. The tram door slides shut behind it with a final thud that echoes through the empty tram car. Gordon waits for the boundaries of reality itself to collapse, or the tram car to fill up with headcrabs…or those massive hulking aliens that it had taken a missile strike to kill…

...but nothing happens. Unable to sit still a moment longer, he leaps out of his seat and looks around the empty tram car, which remains empty and intact. The starry void outside seems unchanged as well, with the tram hurtling along at the same pace to absolutely nowhere. Minutes pass, yet everything remains in perfect stasis—with the exception of Gordon’s level of panic, which is still slowly building. Somehow, this nothingness is worse than the hordes of hostile aliens Gordon was expecting to face.

Now what? Has he inadvertently trapped himself in this tram car until he dies of starvation? He was just—

“—Testing all… possible variables in order, to determine what affectssss… the outcome? As to be, expected of, someone of your professssion,” the voice of the _thing_ in the blue suit utters behind him, and Gordon nearly leaps out of his HEV suit as he turns around to find the entity wearing the poorly-realized visage of a man close enough that he ought to have felt his breath on the nape of his neck. Acting on instinct, he collides with the front window of the tram car as he tries to back away. How…?

As per usual, the entity does not seem to react to his distress. “Perhaps you, are wondering why you out of all four hundred and thirty nine employees in the, Black Mesa facccccility were, chosen for this job? Your academic credentials were, never a factor—my, employers merely required a sssssubject with the right attributes to enact and ssssssurvive a Resonance Cascade scenario—”

Wait, this entity is the force _actually_ responsible for the Resonance Cascade? All of that chaos, all of the lives lost are due to this strange being with the appearance of a nondescript businessman?

“Indeed.” The entity in the blue suit monotones. “And, as well as several secondary objectives this subject would, have to successssssfully infiltrate the border world and, remove the entity known as the... Nihilanth. There were, many other qualified candidates for, the job so you may consider this opportunity being, offered to you despite you... falling short on many of the, parameters my employers were searching for… probability being, on your sssside... if you will. Be that as it may your… performance may have, earned you a chance at employment, but I’m afraid you… require additional... job training for the, tasssssks associated with your new position.”

Despite now knowing that some all-powerful entity that now claimed itself as his “employer” was responsible for the worst moments of his life, Gordon still feels the tiniest bit of weight lift from his shoulders as he clings to the knowledge that the Resonance Cascade _was not his fault_ in the face of the rest of the revelations that the entity has chosen to impart to him.

“For a start, we must eliminate thissss... notion of "free will” that you currently possess. I, knew you would eventually make it back to this moment to, see what liesssss upon the other path you did not take—very predictable, very… human. But I, regret to inform you… there issss no other path.”

The entity’s expression does not change. The amount of light in the tram car coming from the fluorescent bulbs (or facsimiles thereof) and the sparks of luminescence shooting past outside does not change. But somehow, by some metric that Gordon can perceive but cannot quantify, the space around him gets darker.

“You are, under the terms and conditions of my employers until, the moment they no longer have a use for you and, deem it… appropriate to, terminate your contract of employment. The purpose of this “temporal recursion” as you call it, is to free you from, this notion of independence—which, you are no longer afforded as well as, acclimating you to the conditions and expectations… you will be required to work under during your, next assssssignment.”

That tiny spark of relief is summarily snuffed out as the implications of what the entity has just said hit Gordon like a freight train. A chill runs down his spine. Just who or what exactly has he sold his soul (perhaps literally) to?

“By now you, have noticed that the Vortigaunts you have, encountered were mere mindlesssss slaves... to the will of the Nihilanth?” The palpable disdain in this statement is the first hint of an emotion that the entity has shown thus far. Also, the what? “Or perhaps you have not, while you were, slaughtering your way through their ranks without a, ssssecond thought. This… pitiful speciessss has, been enslaved by many forces as they are, easily conquered and kept in line by, cutting off their means of telepathic... communication. Without this connection they, are easily controlled and molded into whatever role their current masssster needs them to perform…”

“...much like, humans hence your current… impediment.” The entity indicates to where its own throat ought to be. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but Gordon could swear that he sees the vaguest hint of a smug grin in the blue-suited figure’s face. Of course this entity is also responsible for his sudden inability to speak, as if it hasn’t ruined his life enough already...

“It is sssssimple really: my employers do not wish, to deal with the h-hassle of an asset that believes itself capable of having, an opinion worth expressing—”

Despite the mountain of corpses he’s left in his wake on his path to the Nihilanth time and time again, Gordon is not a violent man. But as the entity continues to strip away his agency and humanity from him bit by bit—with that shadow of smugness permeating from every atom of his being—Gordon can feel the rage slowly building. And with no vocal outlet, the only channel he has for his frustrations is taking a wild, desperate swing at the blue-suited being’s sorry excuse for a human-like face.

Unfortunately, Gordon's fist—and the rest of his body as his momentum carries him forward—simply phases through the entity as if it were a hologram or a mere optical illusion. Despite this, the footsteps of leather shoes on metal floors and the rustle of clothing as the entity turns to face Gordon again once he’s regained his balance sound very real, as does the disappointed noise it makes. “How… unfortunate,” it tuts. “It seemssss that additional, conditioning will be required before, we can put you to proper use…”

“If this ssssensory deprivation is not providing adequate behavioral motivation through psycho-social neglect, then perhaps something else affecting the physiological, must be removed as well.”

The entity does not move a muscle, but suddenly the mechanical voice of the HEV suit fills the empty tram car unprompted. “Automatic Medical Systems - Disabled,” it announces. Oh no...

“By now you, should know the sequence of events well enough to avoid any injury while performing the necessary actions to, arrive at your destination intact without the use of a pain suppresssssor,” the entity explains. “As for your unsuitable behavior we, have methods of dealing with, dissent from non-compliant subjects...”

The lights in the tram car suddenly flicker off. They flicker on once more—with the entity nowhere to be found within the confines of the vehicle—before shutting off completely as the tram car shudders violently. The sparks of bright light outside fade away into a deep shade of red as Gordon’s earlier fears come true and the vehicle around him starts to break apart piece by piece. The ring of a portal—or possibly a black hole—forms in the distance with a corona of pulsating light, and the remnants of the tram hurdle towards the singularity even as tiny, innumerable shards of metal and glass are stripped away by the howling void.

There is a familiar flash of green light…

When it fades from his vision, Gordon finds himself in an unfamiliar part of Xen, faced with five of the brutish, massive alien grunts snarling right at him. Directly behind him is a steep cliff face, far too steep for him to climb even without the bulky HEV suit weighing him down. Too late, he sees the irony of the entity taking away his weapons but allowing him to keep the HEV suit… for all the good it does him now.

* * *

They don’t kill him. The huge alien grunts mercilessly wail on him—with him weaponless and therefore helpless to fight back—until it feels like they’ve crushed every bone in his body, bruised every inch of skin, ruptured every organ… but they don’t kill him. Even as he’s drifting in and out of consciousness in an involuntary attempt to escape the overwhelming pain of merely existing in this state, Gordon is still sharply aware of the gargantuan brutes ending their assault and just… leaving him here in the dirt, as if they couldn’t be bothered to finish him off. He can feel the ground vibrate as they stomp off, barely managing to open his eyes wide enough to see their retreating silhouettes disappear in the distance.

Just the act of breathing sends jolts of pain coursing through his entire body. Gordon can’t even twitch his fingers without feeling as if someone has just driven a metal stake through his entire hand, let alone attempt to do anything else more strenuous. Even if he could move, it’s not as if that would help in any way with none of the cyan-colored healing pools anywhere in sight. He can do nothing but wait here to die—a mass of broken flesh, barely contained in the shattered remains of a HEV suit, alone with only the overwhelming pain and his thoughts for company—and return to the beginning of the loop.

And this is absolutely the intended effect; the blue-suited entity had already said as much before. The entity means to break his will, then desensitize him towards the horrors he’s relived again and again until he becomes nothing but an obedient pawn in some cosmic game of chess–one in which he doesn’t even understand who the players are. What had it said after he’d killed the Nihilanth again? That Xen was now back under the control of his employers? So the Resonance Cascade—and the loss of countless lives—was orchestrated for the purpose of territory acquisition? Not for the first time, Gordon wishes that he’d stayed in academia—he’s basically traded one corporate overlord for another at this point. Except Black Mesa would have at least let him resign from his position...

The worst part of it all is that to some degree, this mental conditioning has been working: Gordon has been ignoring the plight of the rest of the facility during the last few loops because somewhere along the line he came to accept that there was nothing he could do to save anyone but himself anymore. Now he can see that this was exactly what the entity and his “employers” want of him: someone to carry out their whims without question…

...like the Vortigaunts had done in service to the Nihilanth. The only aliens Gordon has seen who have shown any signs of higher intelligence were the red-eyed aliens with an extra arm protruding from their chests, the ones with slave collars who were docile when he’d encountered them on Xen right up until they were taken over by the mini–Nihilanths. That must have been the species the entity was referring to—

Speaking of which, Gordon hears some familiar murmuring and—with herculean effort—opens his eyes just enough to see the silhouette of a lone Vortigaunt standing over him. Its red eyes glow slightly as it peers down at him with an expression of what might be pity. Is it here because it’s been ordered to be here, or is it here on its own free will? The Nihilanth may be gone but if the entity in the blue suit is powerful enough to trap him in a time loop like this, he’s probably powerful enough to take complete control of the Vortigaunts in its place...

...or perhaps not. Through the haze of pain, Gordon recalls encountering several of these aliens during his ascent of the tower who went out of their way to help him advance, despite there being no apparent incentive for them to do so. Even when they’d been under the control of the Nihilanth, some of the Vortigaunts were still capable of some small acts of rebellion against their all-power master...

As Gordon mulls over this, arcs of green lighting erupt from the Vortigaunt’s fingers. The entity said that these aliens were capable of telepathic communication, but failed to mention if that was only within their species or if they were able to hear the thoughts of others as well. Still, Gordon tries to push through the pain long enough to make eye contact with the alien and think, _’Thank you’_ at it as the green lighting brings one final burst of immense pain before everything fades into a numb, blissful nothingness… if only for a moment.

* * *

“Good morning, and welcome to the Black Mesa transit system.”

At first, Gordon could cry tears of relief at hearing that familiar background noise. He’s back at Black Mesa, on Earth and all in one piece—and no longer immobilized with pain and waiting to die on some hostile alien world. He never thought something as mundane as the automated tram announcement could sound so reassuring...

But then the realization hits him: Gordon hasn’t gone anywhere. Nothing has changed at all, he’s still caught in the time loop at the mercy of the entity in the blue suit. The tears start forming in earnest as Gordon realizes that this brief respite is only an illusion; in another half an hour or so, the Resonance Cascade will occur once more and he’ll be back to fighting for his life again and again and again…

The one small comfort Gordon has is that no one will remember what has happened once the loop resets. So if anyone were to look over at the security camera feed in this tram and see him sink to the floor, openly sobbing, they would have no memory of witnessing him completely breaking down the next time around.

* * *

However, the worst realization is waiting for him in the locker room. Everything seems normal enough as Gordon takes his time walking to the locker rooms, soaking in the last few moments of peace and normalcy until the inevitable alien invasion begins. The AI in the HEV suit goes through the usual introductory spiel as it powers up, until...

“Automatic Medical Systems - Disabled.”

A chill races down Gordon’s spine as his brain registers that announcement delivered in the usual mechanical tone. No. Up until now, Gordon thought that setting was only turned off for the end of that last loop because the entity wanted to prove a point... Oh, fuck no.

Aside from cutting him off from the morphine supply within the suit administered after a serious injury, disabling the automated medical systems would also mean that the health kits scattered around Black Mesa wouldn’t sync up to the HEV suit’s sensors. And once the suit was on, it would be almost impossible to take off without leaving himself vulnerable to the dangers of the two invasions, alien and Marine, occurring after the Resonance Cascade. But no matter what Gordon tries, no amount of desperate fiddling with the controls will enable them again. 

Gordon can’t help but let out an incredulous, silent laugh. Fuck this. He’s not going through the aftermath of the Resonance Cascade with no way to heal any injuries from the many beings out to kill him specifically...but wasn’t that the “punishment” that the blue-suited entity had threatened him with? Even so, there was no way it was humanly possible for him to get from the test chamber to the tram car at the end of the universe without sustaining some injury. (Although what the entity understood of “humanity” was a question in and of itself…)

There has to be a way to fix this. There has to. Perhaps “resetting” the loop would fix it… This thought carries Gordon all the way to the test chamber and the beam of the anti-mass spectrometer. As the machine powers up, he realizes that he was wrong earlier: he hasn’t in fact tried everything yet to break the loop. If the machine is unstable enough to cause a Resonance Cascade...it’s worth an experiment, what the hell does he have to lose?

“What on Earth is he—Freeman, you fool!” Any further commentary from his colleague is drowned out by the deafening thrum of an immensely powerful energy beam coming into contact with reinforced metal and flesh, and the searing pain of every atom in his body _burning_. But if this is what it takes—

* * *

“Automatic Medical Systems - Disabled,” the HEV suit’s AI announces again and again after a few more “experiments”. Fuck, the additional handicap was permanent then. Gordon wants to sink to the floor in despair, but what would be the point? At this point he’s just tired, too tired to really process any strong emotions—all of the anger and misery has been wrung out of him by the previous loops, leaving behind a vague haze of nothingness.

With a sigh of bitter resignation, he dismisses the message on the suit’s HUD and reluctantly makes his way down to the Test Chamber. The entity has him right where he wants him—and nothing that Gordon has done has managed to change that. At this point, what else can Gordon do but keep moving forward?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Triggers/Warnings: Major Character Death(s), Psychological Torture, PTSD, Implied Suicide, Emotional/Psychological Whump, Swearing


	3. Entropy

Gordon has long since since lost count of how many times he’s relived the same three days, how many times he’s run the gauntlet from the Black Mesa facility to the top of the Nihilanth’s tower on the border world, and how many times he’s died in ways he would never have imagined only to be brought back to the beginning to do it all over again. The memories of each consecutive loop have bled over into the others until his recollection of the past has become an amalgamation of repeating events, with no sense of definite continuity. But every single time that he manages to make it to the final tram car, the entity in the blue suit repeats the same spiel over and over again—as if he’s just another human in the loop repeating their predetermined behaviour—until Gordon goes through the portal and the cycle begins anew.

(He refuses to try the second option again, lest the entity add another “condition” to the loops. Every major injury he’s had to deal with without reprieve until he completes a loop—or until something or someone else kills him first—has convinced Gordon to swear off another attempt at “rejecting” the entity’s offer. The thought of death offers no fear now; now when he knows things could be made much worse for him.)

In between fighting, running, and dying through the same sequence of events over who knows how long, Gordon has had ample time to consider the nature of the time loop itself. If this was indeed a proper temporal recursion caused by a singularity created during the Resonance Cascade, it could very well be something akin to a closed timelike curve on a macro level producing a wormhole-like effect and sending him back to the same coordinates in spacetime with each reset. This explanation would go a long way towards explaining why it seemed as if the worldline itself was so stubbornly resistant to all his attempts to change the events within, as the Novikov conjecture predicted the zero probability of altering events that have already occurred and therefore the prevention of paradoxes...

However, this initial hypothesis failed to account for how the other beings in the loop would break away from their previously established routines specifically to thwart his attempts to break the causality of the worldline. Even the laws of physics seemed to twist themselves into knots in order to maintain this set sequence of events. There was also the issue of the loops lasting different lengths of time; a closed timelike curve wouldn’t be able to send him back to the same set of coordinates in spacetime from different points of origin. This also begged the question of why he and he alone retained a sense of mental (but not physical) continuity when no one else within the recursion was affected. Finally, if the singularity that caused the temporal recursions was in fact created by the Resonance Cascade, why did the loops begin with him on the tram and not in the test chamber?

No, the more probable explanation was that the “time loops” were a product of a simulation of some kind created by the entity. Gordon’s peers had always dismissed the simulated universe theory as more philosophy than anything resembling “actual science”, but this was a better explanation for the improbably inflexible worldline of the time loops and the increasingly bizarre illogical coincidences that had occurred to keep it that way. It also explained why the blue-suited entity appeared to have the immense power it would take to bend spacetime, yet still needed him to kill the Nihilanth. Although a being powerful enough to generate and trap him in an artificial universe was still nothing to sneeze at...

Whatever the truth may be, one thing is certain: the entity is always watching. Gordon is constantly aware of the blue-suited figure just outside his peripheral vision, always observing his progress through Black Mesa and Xen with insensate indifference. When will it be satisfied with his “performance”? The layout of the facility and the border world has been carved into the deepest recesses of Gordon’s brain. He can clear a room full of HECU Marines without wasting a bullet within a minute of walking through a doorway. (The sheer absence of emotion he feels towards so casually taking a life—real or not—should scare him. It doesn’t, not anymore.)

Will it (or its mysterious “employers”) ever be satisfied? What was the other option for him again? “Termination”? Real, lasting death and whatever comes after couldn’t possibly be as bad as this repetitive, monotonous existence with no end in sight…

* * *

Yet again, Gordon exits the tram car at the end of the universe through the portal. But something is different this time as the green light fades from his vision. Gordon doesn’t find himself on the other tram car in Black Mesa, listening to the familiar monotone announcement. Everything around him remains a colorless and soundless void as he just...exists there, as if his consciousness has been unceremoniously ejected from his body.

This is new. This is different. This is...alarming.

“Rise and, shine Missster Freeman. Rise and...shine.”

Another flash of blinding light fills Gordon’s vision. When it subsides, the entity in the blue suit is suddenly too close, way too close to him. It is close enough that Gordon can see the sparks of light speeding through the starry void reflecting in the entity’s incongruously-colored eyes. He would try to put as much distance between himself and the entity as possible, but he still lacks any feeling of physicality despite the instinctual discomfort he feels in the uncanny being’s presence.

“Not that I wish, to imply, you have been sleeping on, the job.”

(Was that an attempt at humor? Neither the entity’s expression nor the cadence of it’s voice has changed, so Gordon can’t tell. Was it capable of understanding the human concept of humor, or was that just another facet of humanity that it was copying without total understanding of how it functioned? The more human the blue-suited entity tries to seem, the more its inhuman nature reveals itself.)

As it continues on in its usual cryptic fashion, images of the Resonance Cascade flash before Gordon’s eyes, as if he hasn’t witnessed this life-changing event from every possible angle over and over for who knows how long. Then the visions slowly change to something resembling a factory assembly line on a massive scale, or perhaps some kind of transportation hub? It’s hard to tell what the cold, metallic structure full of pods on rails and other alien machinery suspended over a massive chasm is supposed to be, but it’s not a location that he’s ever been to before.

“So wake up Misssster Freeman.” The entity lets out another one of those guttural hisses that Gordon hears with his mind rather than his ears. “Wake up and, smell the ashes…”

The loud blare of an old train horn from seemingly out of nowhere drowns out anything else the entity might have said. Suddenly, Gordon is back in control of his own body again, but that’s about it in terms of things returning to a sense of normalcy. As his other senses return to him, he finds himself on an unfamiliar (as well as old and rather dirty) commuter train. Faded, torn up pieces of newspaper (slightly soggy, too faded to read) litter the floor. Even though there are only two other men in the entire train car aside from him, there is a faint cocktail of various body odors that fills the space, the residual stench of years of human transportation.

Past the bullet holes in the window, there is nothing but grey concrete, graffiti, and the rust of older urban development as far as he can see. But the view is utterly nondescript; he could be anywhere in the world that has a somewhat run-down urban center with an old rail line. However, it does remind Gordon of the time he foolishly took on a dare from his German fellows at Innsbruck—something about proving that the stereotype that Americans couldn’t hold their beer was demonstrably untrue if he recalls correctly. Everything afterward was a blur, but it resulted in him waking up on a train like this several miles outside of Prague the next morning. The town he ended up in—the name of which he couldn’t pronounce—looked a lot like this, giving it the impression that the Velvet Revolution had somehow missed this place and so the Iron Curtain had not quite been lifted from the town entirely.

Despite this, the man with a blue jumpsuit and a beat-up suitcase in front of him comments with mild suspicion that he didn’t see Gordon get on in an obvious American accent. Looking down, Gordon finally notices that he’s also wearing a similar jumpsuit, as is the other passenger in the train car who is clutching his own suitcase like it’s a life preserver on the Titanic and muttering something about “relocation” (also with an American accent). Unless he’s inexplicably found himself in this train car with only fellow expats for company, this is probably not Eastern Europe again. So where exactly has the entity sent him, and for what purpose?

And why does it keep putting him on trains?

The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference, the entity said. What exactly is he meant to accomplish here, especially with no weapons and no HEV suit? Even if he never wants to see that hideous orange suit again, Gordon feels almost naked without the additional protection it provides in this unfamiliar setting, even if nothing is shooting at him. (And hopefully, nothing does.)

Why are he and the other occupants of the train car wearing the same jumpsuit? Surely if they were prisoners of some sort, there’d be more security and the others wouldn’t have suitcases. Gordon tries to ask the man standing by the door where this train is headed to but nope, his voice is still gone. This—in addition to the disappearance of any residual pain left over from the final loop—proves that wherever he is, he’s still under the blue-suited entity’s power in some fashion.

An awful thought occurs to Gordon: what if none of this is real either? After all that “job training”, surely the entity wouldn’t dump him somewhere and turn him loose with no directions other than a cryptic speech. If the time loop had been a simulation constructed from his memories of the Resonance Cascade event, what was stopping the entity from digging through his brain and constructing this new location within the simulation like a collage of memory fragments?

As Gordon ponders this, the train finally slows to a stop beneath his feet as it reaches its destination. “Well, end of the line,” the man who addressed him earlier mutters with a sigh, more to himself than the other passengers, as the doors pop open. Gordon cautiously follows him out onto the station platform, which looks just as shabby and neglected as the train car interior, as the smell of industrial grade smog with the hint of unknown chemicals hits his nose. The exception to the train station’s general state of dereliction is the massive high-tech screen at the far end of the platform and the small drone that flies forward to take pictures of the new arrivals with a blinding flash of light.

Suddenly self-conscious of the fact that he doesn’t even have a wallet on him (despite the possibility that none of this is real), Gordon tries to discreetly duck around the camera drone and rush towards the end of the platform when he hears the voice of the administrator of Black Mesa coming from the loudspeakers.

“Welcome! Welcome to City Seventeen. You have chosen, or have been chosen…”

The recording of Dr. Wallace Breen keeps droning on, but it falls on inattentive ears as Gordon examines the screen above, which is actually a holographic projector and not a very thin flatscreen monitor as he originally thought. The presence of this new technology—the likes of which he hasn’t seen before, not even on Xen—is one indication that this isn’t a second simulation created by the entity from his old memories. However, this is somewhat cancelled out by the strange presence of his (former) boss in some sort of…advertisement campaign?

But that isn’t the strangest thing about this place at all. Gordon looks over to his right and stops dead as he gazes through the chain link fence. The Vortigaunt on the other side stares right back at him for a minute before going back to sweeping up garbage as if this is it’s nine-to-five job. Although judging by the collar and shackles it wears in addition to a soldier (or guard?) wearing what appears to be a gas mask watching it intently as it works, baton at the ready, this Vortigaunt is probably not getting paid for its labor. Still, the sight of an alien whose brethren were previously attacking Earth doing such a menial task while people just walk right past without so much as a glance is so peculiar that Gordon can’t help but gawp a little and move closer to the fence just to make sure his eyes are not deceiving him.

This can’t be the real Earth, there’s no way…

Still sweeping diligently as not to arouse suspicion from its supervisor, the Vortigaunt slowly makes its way over towards Gordon, trying and failing to not stare directly at him. (Lucky for it, the soldier is distracted by one of his coworkers approaching for some small talk.) What does it want? Does it recognize him as the being who had killed many of its kind? Or the one who many others had helped on his way up the Nihilanth’s tower on Xen? Gordon waits for the familiar arcs of green lightning…

...but they never manifest. The Vortigaunt approaches warily until it is almost up at the chain link fence, at which point it suddenly reels back as if shocked by a jolt of electricity. At the same time, an intense pain races through Gordon’s head for a brief instant and is gone just as quickly. Both the human and the alien recover quickly and briefly stare at each other in mutual confusion until the Vortigaunt seems to collect himself. If the sight of an alien doing janitorial work throws Gordon off, nothing can prepare him for when the Vortigaunt speaks in perfectly understandable English (in a low murmur so the soldiers don’t overhear).

“So, the Freeman has returned. While we are still connected by a common bond, you are shackled by different chains…You know of us, yet you still remain an enigma: reaper and liberator in tandem. We are unbound by your human notions of space and time, yet you pass between the boundaries and out of our sight. But through you, we see ourselves, yet these recollections of us are not our own…”

The Vortigaunt pauses sweeping as if lost in thought. His minders finally take notice and yell at the alien to keep working. He (not an it, clarifies a voice in Gordon’s head which he can’t say for certain is his own) returns to his task, but mutters one last cryptic statement to Gordon before moving away from the fence:

“Our purpose is mutual, and that is enough,” he seems to conclude before turning away, leaving Gordon utterly lost. On his side of the fence, the rest of the civilians have long vacated the platform. One of the gas-masked soldiers comes over to bark at Gordon to keep moving in a slightly mechanical voice as he activates a stun baton that crackles with electricity. He complies reluctantly, with one last glance back at the Vortigaunt, sweeping away as if nothing had happened.

“Were you the only ones on that train?” asks a woman desperately as he makes his way through the turnstile. Gordon nods and gives her what he hopes is an apologetic smile. (It’s been so long since he’s interacted with someone who might be an actual person and not just a memory in a simulation. Not that he’s one hundred percent sure that this is real yet.) She looks just about ready to burst into tears when the soldier raps his baton against the fence and she bolts away in terror. In turn, the soldier lets out a low, metallic chuckle.

Are these beings behind the masks even human? Something about them sets his teeth on edge, but that might be the flight or fight instinct from constantly fighting the HECU kicking in. That level of spite and petty harassment sure seems human... Resisting the urge to pummel this jerk with the crowbar he doesn’t have, Gordon follows the woman down a dark hallway and into the station terminal littered with garbage and more traumatized people in blue jumpsuits. One man hunched over miserably at a table tells Gordon not to drink the water in a hushed voice as he passes by.

“They put something in it, to make you forget,” the stranger insists. “I don’t even remember how I got here.”

‘ _I know that feeling._ ’ Gordon has nothing for him but an empathetic nod. He’d hoped that the timetables posted on the walls above might offer up a clue to his current location (even just knowing which _continent_ he was currently on would’ve been helpful), but the set of undefined numbers and letters means nothing to him. The posters on the walls, the only splash of color or personality in this grimy space, are adorned with a language that he’s never seen before. The only way forward appears to be through a guarded checkpoint made of more fencing and barbed wire. Has he walked into the aftermath of some war or invasion? What’s going to happen to him once they realize he doesn’t have any sort of identification?

With no other options available to him, Gordon takes his place in the back of the line and hopes for the best. As he watches the jumpsuit-clad people ahead of him pass through, his mind wanders back to his initial guess of this being some kind of prison complex. Did the entity pluck him out of one prison only to stick him into another? In a sea of blue jumpsuits and the blue-tinted fatigues of the gas-masked soldiers, Gordon has to look over his shoulder constantly whenever he thinks he’s caught a glimpse of the blue-suited entity. Is it still observing him from just outside his peripheral vision?

Where on Earth ( _is_ this even Earth?) is this “City Seventeen” and how is Doctor Breen involved? (How does one go from blacksite facility administrator to public office? Especially after having a catastrophe like the Resonance Cascade occur on your watch?) Gordon couldn’t think of anyone who would ever want to (voluntarily) live in a city named like some sort of government facility... Perhaps that was more evidence that this is still a simulation, along with the out-of-contextual presence of the Vortigaunt and his former boss. However, throughout the various time loops, the entity had not once created a being or object that had not been present in the first Resonance Cascade event. Why would it start now?

Lost in thought, Gordon barely registers the soldier at the end of the checkpoint stopping him in his tracks and directing him to the left, away from what looks to be the main exit. The black, windowless, and heavily armored train at the platform (bound for “Nova Prospekt” according to the sign) is an ominous sight to behold, but he doesn’t get a chance to get a closer look as the gate slams shut with a buzzer noise before he can step onto the platform. Behind him, a small mob of the gas-mask soldiers blocks his path backward and he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he waits for one of them to make a move. What he wouldn’t give for a weapon right about now...

Over the frantic clicks and flashes of the security camera in the corner, the door marked Security opens up and another soldier demands that Gordon follow him (as if he has any choice in the matter). He reluctantly heads through the door and down a narrow, dingy hallway that looks like it hasn’t seen a vacuum or a building inspector in decades. As they pass by what appears to be a holding cell, Gordon can hear a man plaintively complaining that he has a “standard relocation coupon, just like everyone else” from inside the cell (making Gordon feel the absence of his passport or state ID on his person even more) until the hatch in the door is slammed shut by the man’s current interrogator.

After a similar hatch briefly opens on the next door down, the soldier orders Gordon to step into another interrogation room. The first thing he sees upon entering is a chair bolted to the floor, with fresh puddles of blood pooled at the base. Something tells him that these people (if they are in fact “people”) are not going to accept “I left my papers in my other jumpsuit” as a valid excuse for his lack of documentation, and that’s if he’s even given an opportunity to “speak”. But if it’s just going to be one or two soldiers in here with him rather than a group, he might be able to turn the tables...

As his escort declines any help from the newcomer “with this one”, Gordon looks around the room for anything he can use as a weapon. At least now he’ll be evenly matched once the other soldier leaves; he’s fought his way through much worse odds over the countless loops. A crowbar sure would be helpful right about now… But as the soldier shuts the door and orders Gordon to back up while he walks over to the large control panel at the far side of the room, the only thing he spots that might be a serviceable makeshift blunt instrument is an old metal chair—slightly rusted but sturdy-looking enough and not attached to the floor—at the desk by the entrance.

Gordon starts inching towards it as the soldier taps a few buttons. “Yeah, I’m gonna need some privacy for this…” he mutters as the security cameras retract into the ceiling. The chair will have to do. It’s lighter than Gordon hoped it would be, which means that his best bet is to catch his would-be “interrogator” off guard and try to incapacitate him enough to get a running start. Luckily, the soldier starts fumbling with his mask, giving him the perfect opportunity to strike.

“Now, about—” That’s as far as he gets before Gordon grabs the backrest of the chair and swings the rest of it towards him as hard as he can. Only quick reflexes save the soldier from getting a faceful of furniture; he just barely manages to dodge out of the way of Gordon’s initial swing, then grabs the legs of the chair on his backswing to keep it immobilized between the two of them. As Gordon struggles to try and regain his makeshift weapon, or at least keep it from being used against him by his enemy, the soldier’s mask clatters to the ground.

“It’s me, Gordon! Barney from Black Mesa!” yells the former security guard, straining with the effort against him. Gordon’s first instinct is skepticism—what are the odds of him running into his old friend and coworker, of all people, especially after spotting another familiar face from Black Mesa? “I was… just saying… about that beer I owed ya?”

‘ _That beer?_ ’ Without thinking, Gordon raises a skeptical eyebrow as he holds up five fingers while still keeping a tight grip on the chair. His bar tab, of all things, had been one of the random scraps of memory that stuck in his mind throughout the loops—there were numerous occasions when he would have burned the simulated world to the ground just to get something ice cold and alcoholic. Barney’s eyes widen at this gesture and though there’s grey heavily peppered into his dark hair and wrinkles that weren’t there before, Gordon would recognize that expression anywhere (especially in the context of his long overdue drinks—five beers added up when you weren’t getting paid for another three days).

No…it can’t be. But that face? That voice? Though the weariness of age and stress that have crept in, the mildest southern twang is still present. If this is still a simulation, the entity has done a stellar job because this is unmistakably an older Barney Calhoun. And if it isn’t? Then Gordon’s not the only survivor of Black Mesa after all.

But then why would Barney be here, working for what seems to be a police state? And how much time has passed for him to have aged this much while Gordon was trapped by the entity?

In shock, Gordon inadvertently lets go of the chair and Barney stumbles backwards into the console with a yelp due to the sudden lack of resistance. Would the entity include such an unimportant detail into a second simulated universe? But this can’t be a simulation constructed from his memories, not unless the entity has an uncanny knack for predicting how the passage of time changes human appearances—unlikely, given its own struggles appearing to be human itself...

“Holy crap, Gordon, you nearly got me there!” Barney lets out a shaky exhale and a forced laugh that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. As he sets the chair aside and briefly turns back to the console to make sure he didn’t land on anything important, he quips, “But that’s what I get for letting my guard down around the guy who single-handedly stopped an alien invasion, huh?”

He obviously means it as a compliment, but it rings utterly hollow to Gordon. He wants to set the record straight and tell Barney about the Lambda team plus the countless others who helped him out in Black Mesa, even in the most seemingly trivial of ways. Without their help, he would have never made it as far as he had. And from what he’s seen so far, it looks like everything’s gone to hell despite him defeating the Nihilanth…

There’s so much that Gordon wants to say now that he’s found someone who isn’t just a shallow facsimile of someone he knows, someone who is treating him like _an actual person_. (If this is all fake, then this is a far crueler punishment than taking away his ability to mitigate pain and he doesn’t have a clue what he’s done to deserve it.)

But Gordon can’t say anything; the entity made sure of that. So he just shakes his head. Still, something in his dejected expression gets Barney’s cheerful facade to soften into something more genuine.

“I can’t believe it’s really you, Gordon. And you don’t look like you’ve aged a day, what the hell?” His tone is playful, but there’s an undercurrent of wariness and concern. Understandable, as it must seem to Barney that he’d just shown up out of the blue after however long ago the Resonance Cascade was by now. Gordon doesn’t know how to convey ‘ _Hell if I know, I was too busy trying to cling to my last scraps of sanity and self-identity to notice if I’ve aged or not_ ’ through body language alone, so he just shrugs helplessly.

Barney seems mildly unnerved by his utter silence, and Gordon should probably be more concerned with proving his identity but he’s suddenly finding himself a bit choked up as the realization that finally (finally!) someone else has noticed that there’s something wrong with him hits like a sledgehammer. “The last time I saw you, you were being dragged away by a couple of soldiers in Black Mesa. For the last twenty years, I was certain you were a goner even though Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Vance had hoped otherwise all this time.” Barney has to look away, struggling to keep his voice even.

Twenty years? Has he really been stuck in the time loop for that long? Or has time outside of the recursion moved at a different rate? And had the Marines’ sneak attack become a critical (and painfully unavoidable) event within the worldline of the loop because Barney was there to witness the initial event as an outside observer, and what did that mean for—

It doesn’t matter anymore. None of that matters anymore. Under normal circumstances, Gordon isn’t much of a hugger. As these are not normal fucking circumstances, he wordlessly pulls Barney into a tight hug. The former security guard tenses up at first, and as much as it pains him to do so Gordon starts to pull away. (He’s clearly overstepped his bounds; it’s been twenty whole years and they might have been friends but they weren’t that close—) But then Barney just as quickly yanks him into a tighter hug, and this?

 _This_ is what puts the final nail in the coffin for Gordon’s “second simulation theory”: there’s no way the impassive and _inhuman_ entity would be able to genuinely replicate one of Barney’s proper “squeeze you tight enough to immobilize, but tenderly” bear hugs. A being for whom humanity as only a mere concept wouldn’t understand why that particular sensation (which Gordon had been subjected to a couple of times—not entirely against his will—while dragging Barney away from the local bar for the sake of his wallet) would be so overwhelmingly recognizable that it suddenly opens the floodgates for a whole host of memories and emotions that he’s not even aware of bottling up until now…

Gordon doesn’t even realize that his breath has gone shallow and he’s been shaking until Barney starts absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck in a slow circular motion and somehow it’s both the best sensation ever and about to break him apart completely. “Are you okay?” Barney asks and he can’t help but burst into a fit of hysterical, silent laughter.

He’s finally free of the simulation, back in the real world at last. (For now anyway.) Black Mesa is in the past, twenty years in the past to be exact. (Unless the entity were to have a change of non-existent heart.) Barney’s still alive, as well as Kleiner and Dr. Vance evidently. (But countless others are dead because he couldn’t do enough to save them when it actually mattered.)

Is he okay? This remains to be seen. At this moment, the concept seems more theoretical to Gordon than anything he’s ever studied.

“Don’t worry, I got ya.” If a few stray tears fall onto his jacket, Barney has the decency not to say anything. “Hey, sorry for the scare, I had to put on a show for the cameras,” he explains in a low voice. “I’ve been working undercover with Civil Protection, I can’t take too long or they’ll get suspicious.” Ah, then he shouldn’t be risking Barney’s cover like this. Gordon steps back, taking a moment to pull himself back together and wonder once again what happened while he was gone (“Civil Protection” sounded more like a police force than a militia, but with a distinct dystopian twist). Solely for the sake of reassuring his friend that he’s… closer to “okay” than before, he even rolls his eyes at Barney’s terrible joke as the former security guard brings up a video feed on the console’s monitor.

“Yes, Barney, what is it?” Dr. Kleiner pops up on the screen and unlike Barney, time and genetics have evidently been less kind to him and his hairline. “I’m in the middle of a critical test!” he seethes.

“Sorry doc, but look who’s here!”

His former mentor’s expression brightens up considerably once he notices Gordon, a stark contrast to the cold and dismissive Kleiner of the time loop. “Good to see you alive and well, Gordon! Where on Earth did you come from?” Kleiner greets him warmly, much more warmly than Gordon remembers him being, even back in his MIT years. Perhaps age and whatever the hell happened to Earth have mellowed him out a bit. “I expected more warning!”

“Yeah, you and me both, Doc. He was about to board the express to Nova Prospekt!” Gordon shoots him a glare at the admonishment; how is he supposed to know what that is, he just got here! Hopefully Kleiner has a whiteboard or something similar wherever he’s set up his lab, because Gordon has a million questions right now. He’s also got to warn them about the entity and what its vague designs for him might mean for their espionage operation, resistance movement, or whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish.

“Alyx is around here… somewhere. She would—”

A loud, insistent knock on the interrogation room door interrupts him. “Aw man, that’s what I was afraid of! We gotta go, Doc!” Barney ends the call before Kleiner can reply and hustles Gordon into a back room full of crates and discarded luggage. He’s clearly used this as an escape route for other people in the past, as there’s already an open window at the top of the platform above and a convenient pile of crates to reach it.

“Just stick to the backstreets and stay away from checkpoints, and you should be okay. I’ll meet up with you later,” is the last thing Barney says to him before shutting the door. It’s not until Gordon has already leapt out the window (thank goodness there was another crate below which broke his fall because he briefly forgot that he didn’t have the HEV suit on before jumping) and exited the tiny courtyard through a conveniently unlocked door that he realizes that Barney hasn’t even given him any actual directions to wherever Kleiner is. Or even a description of what this Alyx looks like…

This is the Las Cruces incident all over again. Gordon can’t help but smile at the memory. This is the unpredictable chaos of the real world, it has to be. Gordon still doesn’t know where he is or where he’s going, but at least he now has people who care about him and more opportunities to free himself from the entity’s control. It’s…well, “fine” might be pushing it a bit, but his situation going forward is going to be a lot better than it has been, and that is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking so long with this final chapter: just like Valve, I also apparently have problems counting to three. :P
> 
> Triggers/Warnings: Probably Inaccurate Use of Scientific Terminology, Dissociation, Sensory Overload, (Implied) Psychological Torture, PTSD, Swearing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism is appreciated! (Especially since I have no scientific background whatsoever, and I haven't played any of the games in this series in a few years...)


End file.
